5
As the time of the opening performance drew nearer there were rehearsals in the grounds of St. Agnes’ three or four times a week, and after many of these Griselda offered the actors what she liked to call “a bite.” Roger said that he could not understand why she did it, and it seemed to herself that it was not in her new character as an amused observer of the human comedy. But although the flame of hospitality within her was not a bonfire, it was steady and bright, and it appeared to her to be wrong that people should come to her home and go away again without having received food or drink. Therefore she worked out a plan for giving the Little Theatre bread and cheese and fruit and coffee; she even insisted upon paying for these things herself and serving them herself, so as not to put her father to expense or to make extra work for the servants. The facts that her father did not care about such expenses and that the servants had not enough to do did not enter into the matter; she felt that the Little Theatre was at St. Agnes’ because of her doing and that she ought to take care of at least some of their wants. So contradictory is human nature that she could think sneeringly of her fellow-actors while taking considerable pains on their behalf. As Freddy said in her more sentimental moments, Griselda was not a half-bad old boob in her way.
The Little Theatre loved it. Acting is a great provoker of hunger and conviviality, and the bread and the cheese, the fruit and the coffee were consumed in great quantities. Professor Vambrace complimented Griselda upon the classical simplicity of this refreshment; it put him in mind of the meals in Homer, he said. Pearl and he ate heartily upon these occasions, not knowing what Spartan nastiness the preoccupied Mrs. Vambrace might have left in the refrigerator for them at home. But Griselda’s hospitality begot hospitality in others, and soon the actors were vying with one another to entertain the cast after a rehearsal; simplicity was forgotten, and hospitality raged unchecked. Some of these affairs were very pleasant; others were markedly less agreeable. Mrs. Leakey’s after-rehearsal soirée came well down in the latter category.
What Mrs. Leakey felt when she discovered that Leakey was going to other people’s houses to eat and drink, without her, four times a week, was simple jealousy. But it was not Mrs. Leakey’s way to admit to base emotions; she sublimated them. So she addressed Leakey thus:
“You can’t very well go on eating everywhere and anywhere, week in and week out, without Repaying Hospitality. We don’t want people to think we’re cheapskates. I don’t know that we’re exactly in a position to entertain. Goodness knows we have little enough in the way of cups and saucers. But if other people are having the cast in after rehearsal, we’ll do it too. So you’d better invite the whole tribe for next Friday night, and get it over with.”
When Mrs. Leakey heard that the fare at St. Agnes’ was of the simplest, she smiled a superior smile. Beginning at ten o’clock in the morning on the Friday in question, she worked the greater part of the day on the food which she would serve that night. She baked a chocolate cake and a white cake; she iced the former in the difficult and lumpy Log Cabin style, and the latter she covered with a deep layer of sticky stuff resembling marshmallow. She imprisoned little sausages in pastry and baked them. She made an elaborate ice cream, and coloured it green. She made sandwiches of the utmost difficulty, possible only to a thirty-third degree sandwich-maker, in which bananas were tongued and grooved with celery; sandwiches loaded with cream cheese, or encrusted with nuts and olives; sandwiches in which lengths of chilly asparagus were entombed in two kinds of bread; sandwiches in which fish, mayonnaise and onion were forced into uneasy union. She produced pickles of her own making from the cellar cupboard, and created a jelly from which the imbedded bits of fruit stared forth, like fish from a ruby bowl. By evening she was, to use her own phrase, “all in”, and let Mr. Leakey know it before he went to rehearsal.
“Don’t be later than nine getting back here with them,” she said; “we don’t want them hanging around till all hours. Some of us have to get up in the morning if others don’t.”
This was enough to make Mr. Leakey nervous all through the rehearsal, which began at half-past six, and to put him into a state of real apprehension from half-past eight onward. But when the cast arrived in a body at the Leakey home at half-past nine, who could have been a more gracious chatelaine than Mrs. Leakey?
“I’m glad you came just in whatever you stood up in,” said she, taking in Griselda, who was in slacks, the Torso, who was in shorts, and Valentine, who wore a suit but the tail of whose blouse kept popping out. Mrs. Leakey wore a creation of scratchy lace which showed off her large, strong collar bones to great advantage.
She had invited a few ladies of her acquaintance to help her in serving the refreshments. Some hostesses might have felt that this was a mistake, for these ladies knew nothing about the play, were not members of the Little Theatre, and wanted to talk about other things. Now a theatrical company, however ill-assorted or however amateur, is bound together by ties which are incomprehensible to outsiders. They want to talk about their play, or if they talk of other things, they are likely to talk about them in a manner which does not readily take in strangers. Even a determined hostess like Mrs. Leakey may find herself bested by this exclusiveness. She decided to make small-talk with Solly on the one topic which seemed to interest him.
“I’ve been hearing Eric his lines,” said she, offering him a pickle; “I must say they don’t mean much to me.”
“Oh,” said Solly, who was tired and not in a mood to encourage this line of conversation.
“I think some of Shakespeare’s characters are awfully overdrawn,” said Mrs. Leakey, firmly.
“Really?” said Solly, looking curiously into a sandwich.
“As a matter of fact, I’ve said to Eric that it seems to me that more people would like Shakespeare if he had written in prose.”
“Very likely.”
“Still, that’s just one person’s opinion.”
“Quite.”
The party took on a strongly Ontario character. That is to say, all the ladies gathered in the drawing room, and all the gentlemen gathered in a small room behind it, which Mr. Leakey used as his “den”. In the dining-room, enthroned behind the silver service, one of Mrs. Leakey’s female friends poured out coffee, and the other female friends came to the table from time to time to load up with fresh consignments of food. Roger wanted to talk to Griselda; Valentine wanted to talk to Solly; the Torso yearned in a generous and all-embracing fashion to be at the men. But the power of the hostess at such affairs is very great, and Mrs. Leakey liked to run her parties on tried-and-true pioneer lines. So the sexes ate in decent segregation, and were so cowed that they obediently gobbled some of everything which was offered to them, regardless of how little they wanted it. And promptly at half-past ten the ladies rose, almost as one, and the guests departed.
“Well,” said Mrs. Leakey; “thank Heaven they didn’t stay till all hours. Now we’d better get these dishes washed; I don’t want them staring at me when I come down in the morning. It’s been a hard day, but I don’t want it to stretch over into another.”
By midnight the Leakeys had washed everything and put it away, and were in bed, having shown themselves hospitable.
IT WAS NOT LONG before Mrs. Bridgetower, who had a knack of knowing what was going on even when she was most secluded and ailing, heard about this round of hospitality.
“You know how it grieves me not to be able to do my part,” she said to Solly. “When your Father was alive this house was a rendezvous—a regular rendezvous. But I simply couldn’t see so many people at once in my present condition. I might manage a few, but I couldn’t manage all.”
“Please don’t worry about it, Mother,” said he. “Nobody minds.”
“Oh, don’t they?” said his Mother. “I didn’t know that I’d been forgotten quite so quickly. There was a time, I can tell you, when people looked to this house for hospitality. And you know, lovey, that there is nothing I like so much as to see your fr
iends here.”
Solly had often been assured of this by his mother, but the evidence pointed in a different direction. What his mother liked was to see his friends come to the house, fail in some direction or other to measure up to the standard which she set for companions of her only son, and depart in disgrace. It was still remembered against one miserable youth that five years before he had crumbled a piece of cake on the drawing-room carpet, and had then nervously trodden in it and tracked it into the dining-room; Mrs. Bridgetower could still point out exactly where his crumby spoor had lain. Solly hoped to let the matter drop, but his mother detected this and continued:
“Perhaps the best thing would be to have them in in small groups of three or four, one group each week, for tea. If you will give me a list of their names I shall make up the groups, and telephone them as their time comes.”
“I’m afraid they wouldn’t be able to come to tea, Mother,” said Solly; “most of these affairs are rather late in the evening.”
“Oh, I could never manage that; the anxiety of waiting all evening for them to come would be too much for me.”
“Of course it would, Mother. They understand.”
“Oh, so they’ve been discussing it, have they? Well, I don’t want them to understand anything that isn’t so. I am quite capable of offering hospitality on my own terms. When I was a girl and we got up any private theatricals, we usually made rehearsals an excuse for very charming little teas, and sometimes eggnog parties.”
“I know Mother, but this is different. Much more professional in spirit.”
“Hmph, the world seems to be advancing in everything except amenity.”
“Would you be happy if I invited a few people in, just for a chat in my room, after a rehearsal, now and again? You wouldn’t need to bother with them then.”
“You could hardly invite girls to come here under those circumstances.”
“Of course not. Just a few of the men. And then we should have shown ourselves hospitable, and you wouldn’t have been troubled.”
“Well, perhaps so. I shall write a note to Mrs. Forrester, explaining why I have not undertaken to entertain the group as a whole, and then you shall have the men in by twos and threes.”
Mrs. Bridgetower wrote the note that same day, and at the next rehearsal Nellie said:
“Oh Solly, how sweet of your mother to write to me like that! I don’t know of anyone else in Salterton who would have done it. Really she’s wonderful! So hospitable, and so gracious. It must be a terrible hardship to her that she can’t entertain as she wants to! Of course we all understand. I’m sending her a little bouquet and note from me and Val.”
IT WAS NOT A HAPPY INSPIRATION which persuaded Solly to arrange the first of these masculine gatherings on a night when Miss Cora Fielding was also entertaining the company. The Fieldings were jolly people, and unlike Mrs. Bridgetower they really liked to see their children’s friends in their house.
Not only was there chicken and ham and potato salad and olives and anchovies and fruit salad and several sorts of sweetmeats; there was also rather a lot of liquor, and as Mr. Fielding was more hospitable than discreet the party, at the end of an hour was lively and noisy. At the end of the second hour, square dances were being performed in a room which was much too small for them, and Valentine had danced a hornpipe with great success. The party broke up at midnight; several people kissed Miss Cora Fielding goodnight, and everybody assured the older Fieldings in merry shouts that they had had a wonderful time.
Solly, who was wondering what he would say to his mother if she happened to be awake, was walking purposefully toward the gate when Humphrey Cobbler hailed him:
“Not so fast, Bridgetower; let us adjourn to your select masculine gathering at a dignified pace.”
“Oh, well, really I hadn’t quite realized that Cora was throwing a party tonight. Must have got my dates mixed. Probably it would be better if you came to me another time.”
“Nonsense. There is no time like the present. Procrastination is a vice I hate. Now, who’s coming with us? Tasset? Hey, Roger Tasset! You’re coming on to Bridgetower’s party aren’t you?”
“Oh yes, I remember now that I said I would,” said Roger, without enthusiasm.
“Who else? Mackilwraith? Ahoy, there, Mackilwraith; come along with us.”
“Isn’t it rather late?” said Hector.
“Not a bit of it. Barely midnight. Come on. We’re going to make the welkin ring at Bridgetower’s.”
“The what ring?” said Hector.
“The welkin. It’s a thing you make ring when you get drunk. Bridgetower has a lovely fresh welkin, just waiting to be rung. Come on!”
THE HALF MILE WALK to Solly’s home was not enlivened by much conversation. Why, Solly wondered, had he asked this ill-assorted group? Tasset was a man he wanted to know better, for Tasset was plainly attractive to Griselda, and Solly told himself that he wanted to study his rival. Heine, he felt, would have done so. To cast himself in the role of Heine somehow lessened the ignominy of being a rejected lover; he might be nothing to Griselda, but in his Heine role he was certainly an interesting figure to that dim, invisible, but rapt audience which, since his childhood, had watched his every move. Tasset was the crass, successful soldier—the unworthy object upon whom the Adored One chose to squander her affection: he was the scorned, melancholy poet, capable of examining and distilling his emotions even while his heart was wrung.
That explained Tasset most satisfactorily. But why Mackilwraith? Hector plodded at his side in silence, setting down his feet so hard on the pavement that his jowls gave a little quiver at every step. Why, out of all the men in the cast, had he thought of asking this dullard? He raked his mind for a romantic or even for a reasonable explanation, but he could find none.
Cobbler he had asked because he liked him. Cobbler was a man so alive, and so apparently happy, that the air for two or three feet around him seemed charged with his delight in life. But the Cobbler who was so lively a companion by daylight, in the midst of a rehearsal, seemed a little too exuberant, a little too noisy, in the stillness of the night, when one was growing nearer to Mother with every step. He had not the air of a man who would be really considerate about making a noise on the stairs. And the drinks which he had accepted from the hospitable Mr. Fielding had made him noisier than usual.
As though to bear out his fears, Cobbler began to dance along the pavement and sing:
The master, the swabber, the bos’n and I,
The gunner, and his mate,
Loved Moll, Meg and Marian, and Margery,
But none of us cared for Kate.
“For God’s sake, don’t make such a row.” said Solly. “You’ll wake the whole neighbourhood.”
“I am full of holy joy and free booze,” said Cobbler. “I feel moved to sing. It is very wrong to resist an impulse to sing; to hold back a natural evacuation of joy is as injurious as to hold back any other natural issue. It makes a man spiritually costive, and plugs him up with hard, caked, thwarted merriment. This, in the course of time, poisons his whole system and is likely to turn him into that most detestable of beings, a Dry Wit. God grant that I may never be a Dry Wit. Let me ever be a Wet Wit! Let me pour forth what mirth I have until I am utterly empty—a Nit Wit.” He sang again:
For she had a tongue with a tang,
Would cry to a sailor ‘Go hang!’
She loved not the savour of tar nor of pitch
Yet a tailor might scratch her where’er she did itch.
Then to sea, boys, and let her go hang!
“Please be quiet,” said Solly desperately. “We’re near my home now. My Mother is unwell, and she will be asleep.” (Fat chance, he thought, inwardly.) “We’ll go right up to my room; I wouldn’t like to disturb her.”
“Sir, you are talking to a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists,” said Cobbler, with immense solemnity. “You can rely utterly upon my good behaviour. Floreat Diapason!” He began to tiptoe exaggerated
ly on the pavement, and turned to whisper Ssh! at Hector, whose feet were making a good deal of noise.
Roger thought fleetingly of excusing himself. This was going to be a miserable affair. Bridgetower was afraid of his mother, and Cobbler was playing the fool. Why had he ever allowed himself to be mixed up with such a pack?
The Bridgetower house was in darkness and the front door was locked. Solly was suddenly angry. She knew that he was bringing friends home. This was intolerable. As he rattled his key in the lock Cobbler gave another conspiratorial Ssh! Why, Solly demanded of himself, does she expose me to this kind of thing? To be shushed entering my own home! Angry, he made a good deal of noise in the hall, and led the procession upstairs. At the first landing, as he had expected, was the ray of light from his mother’s door.
“Is that you lovey?”
“Yes, Mother. I’ve brought some friends home.”
“Oh, I did not think that you would, now that it’s so late.”
“It’s just a little after midnight, Mother.”
“You won’t be too late, will you lovey?”
“I can’t possibly tell, Mother. Did you leave some sandwiches?”
“When you didn’t come home by ten I told Violet to put them away.”
“I’ll find them. Good-night, Mother.”
“Good-night, lovey.”
HALF AN HOUR LATER they had eaten a good many sandwiches and drunk some of Solly’s rye, which for the occasion he had diluted with soda water instead of the lukewarm drizzle from the tap. Humphrey Cobbler had established himself as the leader of the conversation and was holding forth on music.
“If there is one gang of nincompoops that I despise more than another,” said he, champing on a chicken sandwich, “it is the gang which insists that you cannot reach any useful or interesting conclusion by discussing one art in terms of another. Now there is nothing I enjoy more than talking about music in terms of painting. It’s nonsense, of course, and at worst it’s dull nonsense. But if you get somebody who knows a lot about music and a lot about painting, it is just possible that he will have an intuition, or a stroke of superlative common sense which will put you on a good scent. If you ask me, we’re too solemn about the arts nowadays. Too solemn, and not half serious enough. And who’s at the root of most of the phoney solemnity? The critics. Leeches, every last one of them. Hateful parasites, feeding upon the blood of artists! Do I bore you?”